Many manufacturing operations require the use of presses to cut or form material into parts of the proper shape. These presses use removable die sets or tools that come together in a precisely designed fashion to bend, punch, cut, stamp, or otherwise operate upon the material fed into the press. Even some molding operations utilize a press to bring the parts of the mold firmly together. Proper alignment of these tools is essential, or valuable material or the tools themselves may be ruined by improperly adjusted machines.
One critical adjustment is parallelism of the parts of the tool, so that the tool sections or mold portions engage precisely with one another. If one corner of the tool is too high or too low, improper engagement may result.
The set up of tools and their adjustment so that they are precisely oriented to apply force uniformly across their entire surfaces is important. This is frequently done by using carbon impression paper with adjustment and shimming used to adjust the tool. These processes are time consuming, expensive, and prone to human error.
Another adjustment process involves the use of pieces of solder placed between opposing areas of the tool that are designed to come close together, or perhaps even contact one another, during tool adjustment. These pieces of solder are recovered after the tool is cycled, and measured with a micrometer to determine whether the parts of the tool are precisely parallel with one another when the tool portions meet. If a sufficient degree of parallelism is not indicated, shims are installed at one or more points to raise or lower the tool corners, and the set-up process is repeated.
These processes of shimming and measuring are very time consuming, hence expensive. Of course, the prior art adjustment procedures described above will only reveal whether the contact points come together with similar engagement force. The prior art procedures yield no information about the order in which the measurement points come into contact. This information is important for adjusting the tool to ensure that the tool produces acceptable parts. Accordingly, a need arises for a tool set-up and adjustment technique that is fast and accurate, and which does not require expensive testing equipment or costly procedures for the set-up.